How To Run Worst Violators Off The Road

Jim Spencer

December 08, 1993|By JIM SPENCER Daily Press

On the day he ran over 9-year-old Denay Patterson, Ruffin Henry Savedge Jr. should have been behind bars, not in them. Only the people responsible for enforcing Virginia's habitual traffic offender law didn't do their jobs.

So although nobody at the state Department of Motor Vehicles or the Surry County commonwealth's attorney's office wanted Denay to die, they share responsibility for her death. Their incompetence left Savedge, a man with four drunken-driving convictions, free to kill.

As surely as Savedge, who was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 4+ years in prison, the DMV and the Surry County prosecutor owe a debt to society. They can pay it by devoting themselves to improving on Virginia's pathetic record for prosecuting habitual traffic offenders.

A Daily Press investigation by reporter Leslie Postal revealed that Surry Commonwealth's Attorney Gammiel Poindexter has one of the worst records in Virginia for prosecuting bad drivers. Between 1987 and 1992 she took to court just one of 45 habitual offenders referred to her by the DMV.

If she can't do any better than that, she ought to resign.

But this is not just a Surry problem. Reviewing DMV records, Postal found that fewer than half of the state's habitually bad drivers get locked up as the law provides.

This situation has to be set straight immediately, regardless of how much it costs and who it embarrasses.

DMV has started moving in that direction by implementing some of the recommendations of a team from the Virginia Transportation Research Council.

Most of those recommendations involve better record-keeping. Too often, habitual offenders are behind the wheel instead of behind bars because they can't be found. Right now, habitual offenders tend to move from place to place or simply give bogus addresses. The addresses DMV provides to prosecutors are notoriously bad. Meanwhile, police and sheriff's departments lack the manpower to track habitual offenders down.

Since July 1, the DMV has started cross-checking the addresses of habitual offenders with the Virginia Employment Commission. The DMV also has begun making potential habitual offenders go to court before they can renew their driver's licenses or car registrations.

DMV officials still want access to the addresses on habitual offenders' state taxes, but that might require a change in federal law.

That change and others are in order. The transportation council wants prosecutors to report back to the DMV the status of every habitual offender's case six months after it is referred. I'd make habitual offenders' names, their individual driving records and the dispositions of their cases public information.

What is obviously required is more cooperation.

The General Assembly might fund a program that will train and pay for police officers and deputies who work full time tracking down habitual offenders. These cops could also be taught paralegal skills and do the paperwork required to put habitual offenders in jail.

There are any number of ways state legislators, the DMV staff, prosecutors, police and the public can work together to get Virginia's deadly drivers off the road. What they need is a reason to make it a priority.

Maybe Denay Patterson can serve as an inspiration. No one can say for sure that better record-keeping and more publicity would have saved her life. But anybody who doesn't think there's a crisis out there needs to look at State Police photographs of what Ruffin Savedge did to her.